Intelligent beauty with a touch of sarcasm.

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My Skin Type

When reviewing skincare I find that it’s important to know about the skin type of the person doing the review. One product might work wonderfully for someone with combination skin, but be terrible for another with dry/aging skin. Instead of describing my skin type in detail for every post I write I thought it might be helpful to have a page that’s easy to find for reference.

I am in my mid 20s and have what I would call combination skin. In my teenage years I had better skin than most of my classmates but it was still always quite oily. In the winter around the year I turned 20 my skin decided to freak out and become a lot drier than it had previously been so I had to revamp my entire routine.

Now that I’ve had time to get used to the way my skin behaves post-teen years, I’ve discovered that I have combination/oily skin in the summer (which honestly is most of the time where I live) and combination/dry in the winter. I still get frequent breakouts, mostly hormonal on my chin and jaw line. I don’t tend to be sensitive to most skincare products, but I will usually do a patch test for ones that contain a strong acid exfoliator or retinol. In general salicylic acid works well for my acne and I use an alcohol free toner morning and night. I’ve also used my Clarisonic every night for the past five years or so. I use a quite hydrating moisturizer at night and oil free moisturizer during the day, except on the rare colder days in winter.

I also wear a physical sunscreen on my face and neck every day, which I’ve chosen for two reasons: One, I hate the smell of chemical sunscreens. Two, it doesn’t sting my skin if I apply it right after I’ve worked out which was a problem I started to have with chemical sunscreens. For the rest of my body chemical sunscreens don’t bother me.
My skin everywhere other than my face tends to be very normal and I’m not too picky about body lotions.